How carts are captured

Nothing can be recovered that was never captured, so it’s worth understanding exactly when a cart is saved and on what basis.

Guests: at checkout, after consent

A guest’s cart is saved the moment they enter an email address at checkout and tick the consent box beside it. The box’s wording is yours (Settings → Privacy & GDPR → Checkout consent text) and a link to your Privacy Policy is added automatically. Until the box is ticked, nothing is stored.

By default the box is unticked (explicit opt-in — the safe choice under GDPR). You can pre-tick it for an opt-out model where your law allows it.

Signed-in customers: from the cart page

Most abandoned carts never reach checkout, so waiting for checkout misses the majority. For customers who are signed in, the plugin can capture the cart as soon as they add an item — no checkout visit, no consent box. This is on by default (Privacy & GDPR → Logged-in customers).

The legal basis here is different: your existing relationship with the customer, rather than a checkbox. Your privacy policy should say that you send cart reminders to account holders — the plugin gives you ready-made wording for this, see Privacy and GDPR. Guests are never captured this way.

What’s stored

The email address, the cart’s items (with quantities and prices), the cart total and currency, the language the shopper was browsing in, when it was last updated, and — later — which reminders were sent and what happened. It’s stored in your own database. If the shopper keeps shopping, the stored cart is kept up to date; if they complete the order, it’s closed and never emailed.

When a cart becomes “abandoned”

A background sweep runs every five minutes (via Action Scheduler, which ships with WooCommerce — not WP-Cron, which is unreliable on quiet stores). Any captured cart with no activity for your idle window is marked abandoned, the rules are applied, and the recovery sequence is scheduled. The idle window is on the General tab; 30–60 minutes suits most stores.

Finding a cart

Cart Recovery → Carts lists every captured cart with its status — Active, Abandoned, Recovered or Ignored — its value, and how far through the sequence it is. Filter by status or date, search by email, or open a cart to see its items, the recovery link, and a timeline of every step with when it was sent, opened and clicked.